How To Improve As Subtlety Rogue — Shadowlands 9.2
On this page, you will find out how you can improve at playing Subtlety Rogue in World of Warcraft — Shadowlands 9.2. We list the common mistakes that you should try to avoid and the small details that can greatly improve your performance.
Overcapping Resources
Since all of Subtlety's damage is tied to resources, it is important to waste as little of them as possible. You should make sure you do not find yourself being Energy capped or casting Combo Point generating abilities when at maximum Combo Points.
Pooling Energy
Pooling Energy has been a vital part of optimal Subtlety gameplay for a long
time now. Often players tend to go into Shadow Dance without enough
Energy which makes them unable to get the maximum amount of globals in the short
burst window. Since Subtlety revolves around these burst windows, you want to
make sure you get most out of them.
You should aim to have at least 60 Energy and use Symbols of Death
instantly to get close to the Energy cap when going into
Shadow Dance
burst windows.
Using Cooldowns Together
On single-target, you should always use Shadow Dance,
Symbols of Death, and
Secret Technique (if talented) together.
Never use Shadow Dance unless you are about to cap on charges or can combo it
with Symbols of Death.
On multi-target situations, you should use Secret Technique on
cooldown, due to the cooldown reduction component of the talent. Don't ever hold
Secret Technique for
Symbols of Death if it comes at the expense of
wasting precious cooldown reduction. Instead, if you have
Shadow Dance
charges, combine Secret Technique with Shadow Dance everytime it comes off
cooldown.
Knowing How To Sim Yourself
It is impossible to correctly play and optimize a Subtlety Rogue without using Raidbots to sim your own character, there are simply too many variables involved to intuitively figure out what gear to wear and so on without simming it first. Generally speaking, a simulation should be the first and final say in the gear you end up wearing for any given situation.
On top of this, simming is now very easy with no need to understand SimulationCraft APLs or installation yourself. All you will need is the in-game SimulationCraft AddOn, and the Raidbots website. Below you can find a video on how to sim your own character using the website.
Analyzing Your Mistakes as a Subtlety Rogue
When it comes to identifying and improving your mistakes, we strongly recommend the website WoWAnalyzer — it will analyze your logs and give you a report detailing how you did on the problems above and more.
Changelog
- 02 Nov. 2021: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.1.5.
- 28 Jun. 2021: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.1.
- 23 Nov. 2020: Page has been revised for release of Shadowlands.
- 12 Oct. 2020: Page updated for the Shadowlands pre-patch.
More Rogue Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Ashine. He is raiding with FatSharkYes and has been competing in the MDI for multiple years, achieving 1st place in 2018 and 3rd place in BlizzCon 2019. You can watch him play on Twitch.
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